Gabriele D'Annunzio, Prince of Montenevoso, Duke of Gallese: 12 March 1863 – 1 March 1938), sometimes spelled D'Annunzio, was an Italian writer, poet, journalist, playwright and soldier during World War I. He occupied a prominent place in Italian literature from 1889 to 1910 and later political life from 1914 to 1924. He was often referred to under the epithets Il Vate ("the Poet") or Il Profeta ("the Prophet").

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D'Annunzio was associated with the Decadent movement in his literary works, which interplayed closely with French Symbolism and British Aestheticism. Such works represented a turn against the naturalism of the preceding romantics and were both sensuous and mystical. He came under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche which would find outlets in his literary and later political contributions. His affairs with several women, including Eleonora Duse and Luisa Casati, received public attention.

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During the First World War, the perception of D'Annunzio in Italy transformed from a literary figure into a national war hero. He was associated with the elite Arditi storm troops of the Italian Army and took part in actions such as the Flight over Vienna. As part of an Italian nationalist reaction against the Paris Peace Conference, he set up the short-lived Italian Regency of Carnaro in Fiume with himself as Duce. The constitution made "music" the fundamental principle of the state and was corporatist in nature. Some of the ideas and aesthetics influenced Italian fascism and the style of Benito Mussolini and, thereby, Adolf Hitler.

 

Childhood

Birthplace of Gabriele D'Annunzio Museum in Pescara

D'Annunzio was born in the township of Pescara, in the province of Abruzzo, the son of a wealthy landowner and mayor of the town Francesco Paolo Rapagnetta D'Annunzio (1831–1893). His father had originally been born plain Rapagnetta (the name of his single mother), but at the age of 13 had been adopted by a childless rich uncle Antonio d'Annunzio. Legend has it that he was initially baptized Gaetano and given the name of Gabriele later in childhood, because of his angelic looks. However, there is wide documentation to disprove this story.

 

His precocious talent was recognized early in life, and he was sent to school at the Liceo Cicognini in Prato, Tuscany. He published his first poetry while still at school at the age of sixteen with a small volume of verses called Primo Vere(1879), influenced by Giosue Carducci's Odi barbare, in which, side by side with some almost brutal imitations of Lorenzo Stecchetti, the fashionable poet of Postuma, were some translations from the Latin, distinguished by such agile grace that Giuseppe Chiarini on reading them brought the unknown youth before the public in an enthusiastic article. In 1881 D'Annunzio entered the University of Rome La Sapienza, where he became a member of various literary groups, including Cronaca Bizantina and wrote articles and criticism for local newspapers. In those university years, he started to promote Italian irredentism.

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Literary work

 

D'Annunzio in 1889

He published Canto novo (1882), Terra vergine (1882), L'intermezzo di rime (1883), Il libro delle vergini (1884) and the greater part of the short stories that were afterward collected under the general title of San Pantaleone (1886). Canto novo contains poems full of pulsating youth and the promise of power, some descriptive of the sea and some of the Abruzzese landscape, commented on and completed in prose by Terra vergine, the latter a collection of short stories dealing in a radiant language with the peasant life of the author's native province. Intermezzo di rime is the beginning of D'Annunzio's second and characteristic manner. His conception of style was new, and he chose to express all the most subtle vibrations of voluptuous life. Both style and contents began to startle his critics; some who had greeted him as an enfant prodige rejected him as a perverter of public morals, whilst others hailed him as one bringing a breath of fresh air and an impulse of new vitality into the somewhat prim, lifeless work hitherto produced.

 

Meanwhile, the review of Angelo Sommaruga perished in the midst of scandal, and his group of young authors found itself dispersed. Some entered the teaching career and were lost to literature, others threw themselves into journalism.

 

Gabriele D'Annunzio took this latter course and joined the staff of the Tribuna. For this paper, under the pseudonym of "Duca Minimo", he did some of his most brilliant work. To this period of greater maturity and deeper culture belongs Il libro d'Isotta (1886), a love poem, in which for the first time he drew inspiration adapted to modern sentiments and passions from the rich colors of the Renaissance.

 

Il libro d'Isotta is interesting also, because in it one can find most of the germs of his future work, just as in Intermezzo melico and in certain ballads and sonnets one can find descriptions and emotions which later went to form the aesthetic contents of Il piacere, Il trionfo della morte and Elegie romane (1892).

 

D'Annunzio's first novel Il piacere (1889, translated into English as The Child of Pleasure) was followed in 1891 by Giovanni Episcopo, and in 1892 by L'innocente (The Intruder). These three novels made a profound impression. L'innocente, admirably translated into French by Georges Herelle, brought its author the notice and applause of foreign critics. His next work,  Il trionfo della morte  (The Triumph of Death) (1894), was followed soon by Le vergini delle rocce (1896) and Il fuoco (1900); the latter is in its descriptions of Venice perhaps the most ardent glorification of a city existing in any language.

Roman period

The first news about the village date back to Roman times when there was already a port frentano near the stream Feltrino; in imperial times the port was used by the Romans for connections over the Adriatic but also had importance for merchant ships. From that period remains part of the old port, near the current seafront of Gualdo di San Vito Marina. The village, however, had not lost its population, as witnessed by a church in honor of San Vito Martyr of the early Christian era.

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Medieval Age

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire San Vito followed the fate of the area of belonging: it was occupied first by the Goths (V - VI century), then by the Byzantines (VI century) and by the Longobards (starting from the second half of the 6th century), who founded the Duchy of Spoleto, to which the town belonged until the Norman conquest occurred in the eleventh century. In the latter period the coast experienced a period of decline, the port was abandoned and covered with stones and river debris. In the early Middle Ages, a castle called "Castellalto" was built, of which there is no information prior to the year 1000. In the following centuries San Vito and the entire Abruzzo became integral parts before the Kingdom of Sicily, then the Kingdom of Naples. In the Angevin period, a document written in 1385 certifies that the property of the port of Gualdum (as it was still called at the time), belonged to the Abbey of San Giovanni in Venere.

 

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In the fourteenth century, the inhabitants of the fiefdom of Sanctum Vitum sided with the Pope Urban VI and the castle was plundered by the gregarious of the antipope Clement VII commanded by Ugone degli Orsini. The abbot of San Giovanni in Venere (Fossacesia) then asked for help to Anxanum (today's Lanciano) who, after sending an army that dispersed the assailants, managed to turn the situation to his advantage by being given in perpetual emphyteusis the fief from the abbey of San Giovanni in Venere, through the payment of a fee of sixty silver pugs. The town of Lanciano, afterward, seeing the economic prosperity reached by the port of San Vito, decided to conquer it. The inhabitants of the commercial maritime city of Ortona then began to worry, and, fearing to lose their maritime supremacy in the area, pushed Ladislao, then sovereign of the Kingdom of Naples, to revoke the authorization granted to Lanciano to restructure the port. In this way, however, a long period of struggle broke out between Lanciano and Ortona. In 1427 San Giovanni da Capestrano reported a temporary peace between the two cities, establishing the pack of the village. With the death of Ladislao and with the consequent struggles for his succession, Lanciano took the opportunity to restructure the port, thus entering into the open war with Ortona, who hired a pirate in charge of demolishing the port facilities of San Vito. He took the opportunity to plunder the village and establish a climate of terror in the district. Lanciano, however, managed to preserve the fief of San Vito. During the Aragonese period (1442-1501), the port of San Vito was used for the Lanciano fairs and maritime trade. The document attesting the period of peace between Lanciano and Ortona is now located at the Municipal Library of Lanciano.

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Modern and contemporary age

With the decline of the Lanciano fairs, also the port of San Vito declined again, and Lanciano decided to sell the port with the relative fief of San Vito Chietino to a certain Sancho Lopez in 1528. In the following years the feudal lordship passed into lordship: between which the Caracciolo family, belonging to Ferdinando Caracciolo, Duke of Castel di Sangro, the last feudal lord of San Vito. During the reign of the Two Sicilies San Vito, established in common, became the seat of the homonymous district while continuing to belong to the District of Lanciano. During the Risorgimento, he distinguished himself in the anti-Bourbon struggle. In 1863 the city legally assumed the name with which it is today known through the addition to the toponym of San Vito, of the attribute Chietino, in reference to its province of belonging. In 1889 Gabriele D'Annunzio stayed for a few months in a farmhouse known today as Eremo D'Annunzio.

During the Second World War, the town suffered significant damage due to the aerial and ground bombardments of which it was a victim, so as to be included among the 35 towns of Abruzzo "damaged by war" (of which 21 in the province of Chieti) and therefore required to have a reconstruction plan.

The proximity to the Gustav Line and the involvement of the town, albeit marginally, in the battle of Ortona (December 1943), which, in its culminating phase, was fought less than 10 kilometers away as the crow flies from San Vito, they can, to a large extent, explain the material destruction and human losses that were produced. Some historic buildings, including the medieval castle, reported considerable damage, while a medieval tower, located in Marina di San Vito, was completely razed to the ground.

Since the sixties and seventies the village of San Vito Marina has greatly developed both by virtue of tourism, and thanks to the motorway communications that in those years had the priority on road and rail transport. In 1969 the Pescara - Vasto motorway section began to operate, with an exit, which of Lanciano, located just 4 km away from San Vito Chietino. In 1973 the entire Bologna-Bari section was opened and in 1975 the motorway was completed up to Taranto. As regards railway communications, the new Sangritana Railway (2005) was opened to the public, in a more recent age, with the connection to Pescara-Ortona-Lanciano-Vasto.